Think back to your school days — Sports Day, the Boys' and Girls' Championships, or the CARIFTA Games. Championship banners around the cricket field, a free drink after your race, a tent full of refreshments, and company logos on the scoreboard, programme, or medals. According to Antigua News Room, a growing body of public health voices is now asking a pointed question about those familiar scenes: What are children really being exposed to, and who truly benefits?
The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that health is shaped long before anyone steps inside a hospital. Where people are born, learn, play, and grow — the social determinants of health — profoundly influence their futures. Schools, therefore, rank among the most important environments for public health. Yet across the Caribbean, those same schools have become valuable marketing platforms.
This is not an argument against sponsorship. Schools need support. Governments cannot shoulder every financial burden, and corporate partners have helped fund sports programmes, scholarships, music festivals, laboratories, and countless other opportunities that might otherwise not have existed. Many businesses genuinely want to invest in young people, and those contributions deserve recognition. But sponsorship is never simply generosity — it is also marketing.
Companies spend millions on sponsorships because it works. If placing a logo on a Sports Day banner or distributing branded gifts had no effect on consumer behaviour, businesses would stop doing it. Marketing builds familiarity, trust, and loyalty. Behavioural scientists call this the "mere exposure effect" — repeated encounters with a brand make people more likely to remember it, trust it, and ultimately choose it. Children are especially vulnerable, as they are still developing an understanding of how advertising functions.
The evidence is unambiguous. The WHO, UNICEF, and numerous independent studies have found that marketing unhealthy foods and drinks increases children's brand recognition, shapes their food preferences, influences what they ask parents to buy, and ultimately affects what they eat. Those colourful logos are not mere decoration — they are strategic investments, and often highly effective ones.
This matters deeply, because the Caribbean is grappling with one of the fastest-growing childhood obesity crises in the world. Approximately 80% of deaths across the region are now attributed to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer — and these conditions are appearing at younger ages. Regional data shows childhood overweight and obesity rates continue to rise across CARICOM countries. In Jamaica, nearly one in four children aged five to nine is overweight or obese. Some neighbouring Caribbean nations report rates as high as two in every five children.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Schools teach healthy eating. Health professionals encourage physical activity. Governments invest millions in chronic disease prevention. Yet the very environments designed to nurture healthy children often serve as platforms where brands associated with products high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats build credibility through repeated exposure.
This contradiction is precisely what the Healthy Caribbean Coalition's "Make It Make Sense" campaign seeks to address. The initiative poses a straightforward but powerful question: If schools exist to protect and develop children, should they simultaneously serve as marketing spaces for products that contribute to poor health?
Crucially, the campaign is not attacking schools, dismissing corporate generosity, or suggesting institutions reject much-needed support. Instead, it asks whether we can do better. Could banks, technology companies, telecommunications providers, renewable energy firms, bookstores, or other health-aligned businesses become stronger partners for schools? Could governments offer incentives for healthier sponsorships? Could businesses continue supporting schools without tying that support to marketing unhealthy products? These are practical, achievable options worth serious consideration.
Barbara McGaw of the Heart Foundation of Jamaica put it plainly: "Supporting children should never come at the expense of their health." Youth advocate Shannique Bowden frames unhealthy food marketing to children as a child rights issue, arguing that young people deserve environments that place their well-being above commercial interests.
Ultimately, this conversation extends beyond food. It is about how societies define health itself. Research increasingly shows that health is not shaped primarily in clinics and hospitals, but in homes, communities, workplaces, policies — and schools. Every decision that affects a child's environment is, in some measure, a health decision.
The question is not whether schools should receive sponsorship. Of course they should. The real question is whether communities have the creativity, determination, and shared responsibility to pursue sponsorships that support children today while protecting their health tomorrow. That is the standard worth setting.
This opinion piece was authored by Offniel Lamont, a Sports Medicine Physiotherapist and Public Health Youth Advocate with Healthy Caribbean Youth (HCY), Jamaica Health Advocates – Youth Arm (JHAYA), and Fix My Food Jamaica (UNICEF Jamaica).
